


A Sharp Rebuke

by Kainosite



Category: La Comédie Humaine - Honoré de Balzac, Les Chouans - Honoré de Balzac
Genre: Bayonet Gag, Belts, Bratty Spies, Bratty Spy/Irascible General, Corporal Punishment, Counterinsurgency Tactics, Discipline, Gags, M/M, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:42:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kainosite/pseuds/Kainosite
Summary: It’s hard enough trying to put down a royalist revolt without a bratty spy interfering with troop movements.
Relationships: Corentin/Hulot (Comédie Humaine)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	A Sharp Rebuke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).



The trouble with mobile columns, Commandant Hulot reflected irritably as he scowled down at the map spread across the table in his bedroom at the garrison headquarters in Rennes, was that one never actually knew where they were.

Hulot had not enjoyed the previous phase of the revolt in Brittany, in which the Revolutionary Army hid away in the large towns while the Chouans rampaged unchecked across the countryside. Especially not when the enemy repeatedly captured cities they were meant to be defending, held them just long enough to massacre any republican official or juring priest they could get their hands on and burn all the records, and then disappeared back into the bocage before Hulot and his colleagues could send reinforcements to launch a counterattack. The Blues’ low numbers made the policy a military necessity, but it made Hulot feel like a coward and a cheat. These were poor people, who could not afford to feed an army that failed to offer them the most basic protection.

Now that the Gars had been defeated and General Brune had come with his thirty thousand reinforcements, the Blues finally had the Chouans on the run. It was a welcome change, but it had been hard enough to coordinate a demi-brigade scattered across two departments when Hulot could rely on his troops to stay in one place. Once they started moving, it became impossible. Sweeping the countryside in parallel was an effective strategy – indeed, in seven years of fighting it was the only thing they’d found that could flush the Chouans out once they’d gone to ground – but it relied on perfect synchronization between the columns. It was all very well to hand his captains a set of itineraries and tell them to rendezvous in such-and-such a town in so many days, but in Pluviôse, with the roads in Brittany being what they were, and the possibility of a nest of insurgents waiting to snipe at them behind every hedgerow, there was no guarantee that a column would arrive at its destination at all, much less get there on time. Even his veteran officers were struggling, and the new recruits who had been brought in to fill out the numbers of his depleted demi-brigade were hopelessly lost, both physically and metaphorically.

The last time they’d done this, they had done it in the summer. Hulot appreciated why Brune wanted to move fast, to put down the rebellion and capture its leaders before the royalists could rally more support from England. He’d had a taste of that with the Gars, English officers and a couple of cannons, and that had been bad enough. If the English were willing to fully arm the Chouans, or worse, to send some of their own regiments to reinforce them, France would have not a refractory province but a new front on her hands. No doubt London was watching their progress closely to see whether the insurrection was worth backing.

But however things looked from across the Channel, on the ground in Brittany they looked like a lot of mud and freezing rain and long delays and detours and columns getting stuck or lost or turned around or running into each other, and everyone in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was all very well for the First Consul to promise them the gratitude of the nation for braving the miseries of a winter campaign, but his warm words couldn’t dry out the roads. Hulot was trying to have patience with it, but his reserves of good humor were running low.

However green Captain Chevrel might be, five days to get from Vitré to Rennes was absolutely ridiculous.

“Where in hell can Sixth Company have got to?” Hulot demanded of the map, and of his three officers who were gathered around it, although he knew they had no more idea than he did.

It was a rhetorical question, and he was not expecting an answer, certainly not from the bed in the corner, where a slim figure reclined and leafed through a book while the military men conferred over troop movements.

“They’ve been held up at Val-d’Izé.”

They all turned to stare at Corentin. He looked up from his reading and lifted his eyebrows in polite inquiry.

“How do you know this?” asked Captain Bernadet, who commanded the garrison at Rennes and hadn’t spent enough time with the spy to realize this line of questioning would get him nowhere.

Corentin just smiled enigmatically.

“Held up? What by?” asked Hulot. Corentin was reticent about his sources, but he was relatively free with information – mostly, Hulot suspected, because he couldn’t flaunt his superior knowledge in front of them unless he could demonstrate how much he knew. Still, intelligence shared for petty motives was intelligence nonetheless, and Corentin’s was generally correct.

“Chouans. What else?”

“A skirmish held them up for four days?” Merle asked.

“Once they got themselves encircled.”

“Encircled!” Hulot exclaimed, his mustache bristling with indignation. “How many of these damnable Chouans are there?”

“Oh, four hundred or so.”

“Four _hundred?_ There are _four hundred_ Chouans camped up at Izé, and you didn’t see fit to mention this until now?”

“They’re not going anywhere. They’re besieging Sixth Company,” Corentin pointed out, with infuriating logic. “And you seemed busy.”

“Thunder of God! Citizen spy, if you have forgotten, I am busy trying to find the Chouans, whom you have apparently known for God knows how long are at Val-d’Izé attacking one of my columns!”

“You needn’t worry about your soldiers. Captain Chevrel has fallen back on the Chateau du Bois-Cornillé. It’s a thirteenth century castle; ten men could hold it for a month. They’ll be fine.” The muscadin’s thin lips curled upwards again in an expression that was too predatory to be called a smile. “I thought the good captain would benefit from some firsthand experience of a siege.”

Gérard was frowning down at the map. He looked troubled.

“How is it that four hundred Chouans come to be in that country at all? I know we’ve had trouble at Izé in the past, but the company there was led by Henri du Boishamon. He laid down arms three years ago. I had a long talk with him after he surrendered; he wasn’t malicious, just misguided. I managed to convince him he ought to be fighting for his country, not against her. He enlisted in the army as an ordinary soldier. To the best of my knowledge he’s still fighting in Italy.”

“Yes, I remember him now. He seemed a good lad, I’m sure he wouldn’t break his word and take up arms again against France,” said Hulot.

“Could the company have reformed under somebody else? I recall there was a brother,” said Bernadet.

“Even if it has, there were two dozen in that band, not four hundred. Our difficulty at Izé was that they were good tacticians and they knew the ground, not that they had the force of numbers,” Gérard reminded them.

“Oh, I don’t think these are local,” said Corentin.

“Then what the devil are they doing there?” Hulot demanded. “For that matter, what the devil is Chevrel doing there? His orders were to march from Vitré to Rennes, not to go wandering around the countryside!”

Hulot had hoped assigning his least experienced officers to the main roads would keep them from getting lost. Apparently he had been overly optimistic.

“You’d have to ask him,” said Corentin.

Through all this talk Merle had been watching the spy with an uncharacteristically hard look on his usually cheerful face. He had never forgiven Corentin for Marie de Verneuil’s death, the more so because it was his own men who had shot her, and because as he owed Corentin his life he felt he could not in honor act upon the grudge. But this hostility seemed something more.

“Would we?” he asked quietly. “Or is there someone in this room who could answer for him?”

Corentin lifted his chin and stared down his short nose at Merle with aristocratic hauteur. “What are you insinuating, Captain?”

“You said earlier that Chevrel would benefit from firsthand knowledge of a siege. You wouldn’t by any chance have arranged this educational experience for him, would you? Only, you seem suspiciously well-informed about events in a little village eight leagues from here, and by some mysterious coincidence Sixth Company and a small army of Chouans seem to have converged there, in a place where neither of them were supposed to be.” He turned to Hulot. “My commandant, I don’t know how he’s managed this, but I can make a fair stab at why.”

“Go on,” Hulot said.

“Two weeks ago, when we were in Laval, a bunch of us were in the Pewter Jug having a drink. You and Gérard weren’t with us – you were arguing with the mayor about grain requisitions, I think. But I was there, and Chevrel and Lamotte and a few others, and Citizen Corentin was sitting at the end of the table not saying a word, just nursing one cup of cider the whole night and taking note of everything we said to report back to Fouché. Well, I don’t know that’s what he was doing, but I don’t suppose he was there for the pleasure of our company,” Merle said, sparing the spy an unloving glance.

“Anyway, the conversation came round to the siege of Mainz, and Captain Chevrel happened to make some intemperate remarks. Any real man would have died rather than surrender, if he’d been there he’d have shown the Prussians some proper fighting, he couldn’t believe our demi-brigade was led by a coward – you know how these Bretons talk. To be honest, I was tempted to call the little prick out myself, but I know your feelings on dueling, sir.”

“Stupid waste of lives,” growled Hulot.

“And an archaic vestige of the aristocratic system,” Gérard put in primly.

“To be sure. Besides, he was pretty deep in his cups and I don’t think he quite knew what he was saying. He’s not a bad kid really, just a little hotheaded, and he makes a fool of himself when he’s drunk – well, who doesn’t? If we start shooting people for that we won’t have any officers left.”

“You have a forgiving heart, Merle,” said Bernadet, who had not been with them at Mainz, but who had served under Hulot long enough not to harbor any doubts about his commander’s bravery.

“And Corentin, as we know, does not. I reckon he took exception to Chevrel’s remarks and decided to take justice into his own hands.”

It was all too plausible. Over the past few months they’d learned there was no slight too small for Corentin to avenge. It would be a surprise, but not a tremendous one, to discover that the spy had grown fond enough of Hulot to take an injury against the commandant as an injury against himself, and meet it with the same retribution. And Chevrel’s drunken pronouncements, as Merle reported them, were just the sort of martial bluster to rouse his pique. Despite his flamboyant fashion sense, Corentin had a withering contempt for anything that suggested a lack of pragmatism. He could admire the basest treachery as long as it was carried out with skill and audacity, but the idea that a man might willingly die for his principles appalled him. The notion that Hulot and the other defenders of Mainz should have fought to the death in a doomed siege rather than accepting the terms of surrender that had brought them here to Brittany was one he would find intolerable. 

After the death of the Gars, Fouché had suggested that since Corentin had proven himself so useful in hunting down royalists, he should remain with Hulot in Brittany until the Chouan threat was entirely eliminated. Hulot suspected he just wanted to fob his pet nuisance off on someone else for a while, or perhaps there was some business afoot in Paris that the Minister of Police didn’t want his young protégé caught up in. All the same, after Corentin’s quick thinking had saved the lives of his men at La Vivetière, Hulot didn’t feel he could refuse the offer. And to be fair, it was proving to be a cold winter, and Corentin was doing an excellent job of warming his bed. His intelligence work wasn’t bad, either – Gérard and Merle were only the first of Hulot’s soldiers to owe him their lives. But Hulot sometimes felt he spent more time trying to impose some semblance of military discipline and basic human decency on the devious little wretch than he did commanding his entire demi-brigade.

“Right,” he said grimly. “Stand up.”

“What for?”

“You mean to answer these charges lounging on the bed like an aristocrat? On your feet, citizen spy.”

“I haven’t heard any charges, just a load of baseless supposition,” Corentin said tartly, but he set his book down and rose from the bed, albeit with the condescending air of a man indulging a lunatic.

“Is there any truth in it?”

“I will own that I thought Captain Chevrel’s comments very stupid. As to the rest, I am hardly in command of the Chouan armies – or the republican ones. It’s not for to me to dictate their movements.”

Merle laughed. “What was it you said to us back in Fougères? Something about making dextrous use of the most stubborn passions of mankind, and setting them like springs in the machinery of the state, and using them to bait amusing traps? ‘To be one of the superior police is to be like a god,’ I think you said. I don’t suppose a god has much trouble directing people where he wishes them to go. Certainly you had none with Montauran.”

Hulot fixed the spy with a glare that had struck fear into the hearts of braver men than their cosseted little incroyable. “We will have to go and rescue Sixth Company, and when we do, I will have the truth of this from Chevrel, and perhaps from the Chouans as well. If you had a hand in this, it will go better for you if you confess it now. _Before_ I arrive at Val-d’Izé to find any of my men dead.”

Not a flicker of alarm passed over Corentin’s pale face, but despite his outward tranquility Hulot knew he was weighing his options, for it was no idle threat. Corentin’s machinations had cost them lives before, and Hulot had seen to it that the spy paid for every last one of them. The flat of Hulot’s saber was not a penalty he would incur again lightly.

“It’s possible that the Chouans intercepted a message suggesting a company of Blues was collecting all the gold and silver plate from the churches around Vitré,” he admitted, after a moment’s reflection.

Hulot glowered at him. “Are you familiar with the First Consul’s proclamation to the inhabitants of the departments of the West, guaranteeing them the liberty to practice their religion?”

“It promised that they might make use of ecclesiastical buildings for their original purposes. It said nothing about the priests keeping their baubles,” Corentin countered, with a self-satisfaction that would have earned him a smack on the ear if he’d been in range. Since he wasn’t, Hulot slammed his hand down on the table.

“I couldn’t give two shits about the wording. The government is doing everything in its power to stamp out this war of religion these ridiculous peasants insist on fighting, and you decided to throw some oil on the flames – what, for a whim?”

“My commandant, you have been in Brittany long enough to know that all this whining about religion is merely a pretext. This war is over conscription and taxes, which is why it began with the new levies, and not with some outrage against the Church.”

“All the more reason! I won’t have my men killed over a pretext!”

“No one is going to be killed. At least, no more than one would expect of soldiers in wartime. Bois-Cornillé is perfectly defensible for anyone with half a brain.” Corentin smiled unkindly. “Although Chevrel must be getting rather hungry by now. They only had provisions for two days.”

“And his men?” Gerard asked sharply. “They said nothing to offend you.”

“Yes, it is a pity about the men. But peasants are used to privation. I’m sure it will weigh more heavily on an officer.”

“When we get them back you will owe Sixth Company an enormous apology and a very good dinner, citizen spy,” growled Hulot. “And you still haven’t explained how they came to be there in the first place.”

“I can only suppose Chevrel’s orders suggested a different rendezvous point. Saint Aubin, perhaps?”

Hulot groaned. He’d been letting Corentin serve as his secretary when Gérard was engaged elsewhere. It seemed only sensible, for the spy wrote so much faster and more neatly than Hulot could himself, and he never misspelled a word. He should have known that this minor convenience would come back to haunt him. Chevrel would have no reason to suspect anything amiss with an itinerary written out in Corentin’s hand.

“I never should have trusted you with military business!”

“But even if he did make a false copy of Chevrel’s orders, wouldn’t he have needed your signature, sir?” Bernadet asked.

Corentin looked smug. “Speaking hypothetically, a signature is quite easy to copy. You just need to hold the paper upside down while you trace it.”

Merle elbowed Gérard, who had studied law before the Revolution. “Say, Gérard, isn’t forgery of state documents a felony?”´

“Oh mince, are you going to report it to the police?” Corentin asked jeeringly. They all knew the civil authorities wouldn’t dare to lay a hand on Fouché’s agent. 

Fortunately, Hulot had no such reservations.

“He reported it to me, and he was right to do so!” he thundered. “How dare you interfere with the disposition of my columns! You had no business giving my officers any orders at all, much less deliberately subverting mine. You little weasel, when I get through with you you’re going to have more red and blue on you than the Tricolor!”

“I can’t see what you’re making such a fuss about,” said Corentin. “I was defending your honor and that of your regiment. You ought to be thanking me.”

This last insolence was too much for Hulot’s patience. He stomped over to Corentin, took him firmly by the arm, and marched him over to the corner opposite the bed, where he hauled him up to attention and positioned him with his nose against the wall.

“You can’t, can’t you? Well then, you can stand there and have a good think about it, while we try to sort out this mess you’ve made.”

“It’s hardly a mess,” Corentin said, as Hulot went back to the table. “I gathered the enemy all in one place for you. If anything I’ve made your job easier. You should be thanking me for that as well.”

“Think _in silence_ ,” growled Hulot, “if that wasn’t clear.”

Corentin huffed an exasperated sigh, but subsided. For a time Hulot had hope that good sense might have prevailed, for the spy stayed where he’d been put and held his tongue, and if he slouched a little from the rigid posture Hulot had placed him in, it was not so much that Hulot felt the need to rebuke it. He and his officers were able to plan out the attack in peace, plotting the positions of their columns and the encircling Chouans on the map with their spare change for counters.

It swiftly became clear that they would not be able to rescue the besieged company the next day. The two battalions Hulot had at his disposal were concentrated on Rennes, where they had converged after completing the most recent leg of their sweep through Ille-et-Vilaine. It would take the better part of a day’s march for them to reach Val-d’Izé, and when they got there the men would be too tired to fight. Besides, if all the Blues attacked from the southwest, the Chouans would simply scatter to the north, and they would forfeit the advantage that Corentin’s scheming and Sixth Company’s sacrifices had won them.

The situation demanded a more considered approach. If Hulot split his men into four groups, they could surround Val-d’Izé from all sizes and hopefully cut off the Chouans’ avenues of retreat. If they could close the net around the enemy encampment and encircle the encirclers, they might yet win a famous victory. Five companies would travel to Vitré, to retrace the route Sixth Company must have taken and attack from the southeast. The remaining thirteen would take the road to Fougères, with two groups peeling off along the way to stop for the night in La Bouëxière and Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, to cover the approaches from the west. The last three companies would travel all the way to Fougères, join forces with the National Guard of the town, and march south again the next day to attack from the northeast.

For the men in the fourth column it would mean a forced march to Fougères and half a day’s march the next day, but it couldn’t be helped. They would have a few hours to rest, and then all four columns would attack in the afternoon, and hopefully their besieged comrades would be in their arms by nightfall. If their defensive position was as strong as Corentin claimed it to be, Sixth Company should be able to hold out for two more days. Still, it was vexing to know that his men were trapped and starving and Hulot could at the moment do nothing to aid them.

“Most of Second Battalion got here three days ago! If only we had known then what was happening at Izé, we might have sent some of the men on ahead and been in position to attack tomorrow,” Gérard lamented.

This observation, while perfectly true, proved too much for Corentin.

“It’s not my fault you don’t know where your own columns are,” he said waspishly.

“In this case it was your fault,” said Merle.

“One more word out of you, citizen spy, and I will gag you,” Hulot warned.

“That would be a mistake, since I seem to be the only one with any idea what’s going on.”

“Right, that does it.”

Hulot flung the liard he’d been holding, which represented fifty Chouans, down on the map and made for the door.

Behind him, he heard Corentin pipe up, “Where’s he storming off to?”

“Welcome to the army, lad,” Bernadet answered, with heavy irony. For once it was the soldiers who knew exactly what was coming and the spy who was in the dark.

Hulot tramped downstairs, went outside, and asked the sentry at the door for the loan of his bayonet. It was, perhaps, a slight breach of security, but if it came down to bayonet fighting in the center of Rennes, they had much bigger problems than could be solved by a single soldier. Besides, the aneurysm Corentin was sure to drive him into if he allowed the little wretch to keep talking would throw the republican forces into greater disarray than an enemy assault on their headquarters.

As he went back upstairs, he tested the edge of the blade against his thumb. It was blunt enough not to cut, but sharp enough to make the pressure distinctly uncomfortable – just the thing for silencing a mouthy spy.

Hulot was pleased and a little surprised to see that Corentin was still in his corner when he came back into the room, although he was looking over his shoulder at the door. His brow furrowed at the sight of the bayonet.

“What’s that for?”

“A reward for a sharp tongue,” Hulot said. He came over and turned Corentin around, then untied his cravat. He expected the incroyable to make a protest on behalf of his linen, but it seemed Corentin had realized he had fully exhausted his commandant’s patience, for he allowed Hulot to remove it without complaint and watched in sulky but unresisting silence while Hulot twisted the fabric to make a rope of it. It was only when Hulot wound the cloth twice around the blade of the bayonet near the socket that Corentin understood what he meant to do with it, and shied back against the wall.

“I’m not putting that in my mouth!”

“Don’t imagine you have any choice in the matter.”

“But you don’t know where it’s been!”

“Someone’s intestines, more than likely,” Merle put in cheerfully.

“At least wipe it off first!”

Hulot sighed and scrubbed the blade against his breeches a few times.

“Happy now?”

“No!” said Corentin, but he reluctantly opened his mouth to admit the blade when Hulot pressed the edge of the bayonet against his lips, glaring at him reproachfully all the while. Hulot looped the twisted cravat behind his head and wrapped it a few times around the blade on the other side of Corentin’s mouth, careful to secure the gag snugly enough that Corentin couldn’t push it out without pulling it so tight that it cut his cheeks. When he was satisfied with his handiwork, he tied off the cravat and let go.

Corentin mouthed experimentally at the bayonet, trying to settle it into a more comfortable position and swiftly discovering that there wasn’t one.

“It doevn’t acfully ftop me from talking,” he said after a moment, although the smug triumph with which he’d begun the sentence was replaced with dismay by the end, as he discovered how the blade chafed the corners of his mouth with every syllable.

“No,” agreed Hulot, whose fiery temper and blunt speech had brought him his own encounters with the bayonet gag in his youth. “It just encourages you to think very hard about whether your words are worth saying.”

As long as one kept perfectly still, the gag was unpleasant but not unbearable. The hour or so that Corentin would have to stand at attention with the bayonet in his mouth while Hulot and his officers finalized their plans for the attack was a mild punishment as such things went, as long as he had the sense to hold his tongue. But any vibration jarred the blade, and that abraded the corners of the mouth, rubbing the metal back and forth against the delicate skin like a saw. To march or do fatigue while wearing it was a sore trial, and any man brave or stupid enough to keep talking would soon find it a savage instrument of torture. Hulot had seen soldiers who would not stop cursing their officers even as the blood ran down their cheeks and stained their collars crimson.

Corentin, fortunately, was not of that breed. He did not believe in avoidable suffering, and one sentence had been enough for him to take the hint. After Hulot turned him back to the wall, the spy spent the rest of the meeting in silence, his head humbly bowed and held at a slight angle to balance the weight of the socket. With his carefully curled ringlets framing his face and the socket of the bayonet projecting from the side of his head like a crank, he had the look of a mechanical doll, just waiting for someone to wind him up.

When they had divided the companies of the demi-brigade between the four columns, decided who would lead each party and how to communicate between them, and made some final contingency plans, Hulot bade his officers goodnight. He asked Gérard to remain a moment while he untied the gag. Not that it wouldn’t improve his temper to make Corentin hear him out without a thousand quibbling interruptions for once, but he couldn’t give the spy the hiding he had coming while he was still gagged. It would be cruel to make him howl when it meant slicing his own cheeks open.

“Return that to the sentry at the door for me, will you?” Hulot said, handing the bayonet to his adjutant.

“I will. Goodnight, sir,” said Gérard, and then, with his usual scrupulous fairness, he peered over Hulot’s shoulder and added “Goodnight, Corentin.”

Corentin was evidently sulking, for this courtesy received no reply. Hulot shut the door behind him and turned to his pet spy, who was still standing in the corner, giving Hulot a look of bitter reproach.

“That hurt.”

“It’s not meant to be comfortable.”

“You’re a brute,” Corentin said, rubbing at the corners of his mouth and the red line that marked his face where the blade had dug into his flesh.

“And you’re a brat. You know full well that you have no business interfering in a military operation, much less falsifying orders and forging my signature. What were you thinking?”

“That someone should teach Chevrel some respect. He had no right to speak of you as he did.”

“I am quite capable of winning the respect and obedience of the men under my command without any help from you,” Hulot told him severely. “As you are about to find out.”

He unbuckled his leather sword belt, unclipped the scabbard, and set it down on the table. Pulling out one of the chairs, he set his left boot upon the seat and beckoned to Corentin, who had watched these preparations warily from the corner.

“Come on, then.” Hulot patted his knee.

“I’d just as soon stay over here.”

“You won’t like it if I have to come over there to fetch you,” Hulot warned. “Come, you falsified an order and forged my signature. You must have known how this would end.”

“I only meant to tell you where Sixth Company was so you could go rescue them. I wasn’t expecting Merle to snitch.”

Hulot snorted. “That’s not a complaint that carries much weight coming from a police spy. Besides, Merle’s silence would only have postponed this conversation, not prevented it. I was bound to ask Chevrel what he was playing at taking his column up to Izé, and everything would have come out then.”

“Yes, but that would have been after the battle. I figured you would have killed too many Chouans by then to be very cross with me over how your victory had come about. It never occurred to me you might hold me personally responsible for the casualties.”

“Of course I hold you responsible! You set up the rendezvous!”

“Sixth Company was out hunting Chouans anyway. I just made sure they found some.”

“They weren’t expecting to find every Chouan in the department. Well, no doubt Captain Chevrel has had a good lesson, and you are about to have yours. Come here.” Hulot patted his knee again.

“But–”

“Enough dawdling. Didn’t you start all this out of appreciation for the virtues of a timely surrender?”

Corentin pouted, but he finally came to Hulot’s side, albeit with the speed of a man walking through molasses.

“Must I take down my breeches?” he asked, when he’d stopped beside the chair.

“I’m sure the great diplomatist can work out the answer to that for himself.”

The great diplomatist heaved a put-upon sigh, but unbuttoned them and pushed the tight yellow buckskin down to his knees. Corentin had long since discovered that they came down just as easily if Hulot untied the gusset in the back, and then he’d have the inconvenience of having to tie it back up again. When he’d got them down, Hulot took him by the collar and hauled him over his knee. He found things worked best, with the minimal amount of kicking, if he pulled Corentin far enough forward that the spy was standing on his tiptoes and off balance, but still supporting the bulk of his own weight.

If it were Merle or Chevrel or one of his troopers he was thrashing, Hulot could have ordered the man to bend over the chair or the table and proceeded in greater comfort, but Corentin wouldn’t stay down if he wasn’t held. Hulot knew he could demand of the spy the same discipline he expected of his soldiers – for all his soft Parisian ways Corentin had impressive self-control when he saw fit to exercise it, and keeping still for a beating was surely within his capacities. But Hulot was prepared to make this concession to civilian weakness. Corentin was so slight that it wasn’t much trouble to hold him in place, and there was something appealing about having that pert little bottom wriggling over his knee. If he tried to enforce some better discipline Hulot suspected they would both regret the lost intimacy.

He pushed aside Corentin’s shirt and the long tails of his coat to give himself a clear target, then folded his belt in half and brought the white leather down smartly across Corentin’s pale cheeks. The stripe reddened instantly, and Corentin jerked in his grip and clutched desperately at his ankle, holding on so tight that Hulot could feel his fingers through his boot.

“First off. When my men receive my orders, they must be able to trust absolutely that they are indeed my orders, and not a ruse devised by you to lure them into some fiendish trap.” He swung the belt against Corentin’s bottom again. “The whole of our military discipline depends upon it. I must send men, regularly, to their deaths.” Another blow. “That is a soldier’s lot, and they are brave men who face it without flinching, but if they cannot trust that their lives are spent in the defense of their country and not to suit the petty whims of a spy they will not go, and if they will not go then we do not have an army.”

Hulot cracked the belt down hard to emphasize this last point, eliciting a yelp from the spy.

“But there’s no need to tell Chevrel his orders were false!” Corentin protested. “No one but the five of us who were in this room need ever know! It can’t undermine discipline if your men never find out.”

Hulot allowed the belt to convey his opinion of this suggestion.

“Here’s a better idea: you are never, ever, to issue false orders or to forge my signature again,” he said, punctuating the sentence with more strokes of the belt.

“All right, all right, I understand!” Corentin said, a little tearfully.

Hulot could not help but notice that this was not, in fact, a promise not to do it. He decided not to extract one, on the grounds that Corentin’s word of honor was worthless and asking him for it only set him up to break it. If Hulot really wanted to discourage future forgeries, his best chance was to make sure the spy fully understood what it would cost him, something he tried to communicate with a thorough application of his belt.

When he was finished he gave Corentin a minute to catch his breath and took the opportunity to admire his handiwork. The spy’s buttocks were a lovely rosy hue from his tailbone to halfway down his thighs, with darker patches where two stripes had overlapped or where the end of the doubled belt had wrapped around and caught him along his right thigh. They weren’t nearly done, but Hulot thought things were progressing nicely.

“Second point. Warfare is not a game of boules. You cannot simply knock one unit into another and expect them to bounce off each other with perfect predictability according to the laws of physics,” he told Corentin, with a lash of the belt for emphasis. “Everything – the weather, the men’s morale, how far they’ve marched, which side had a better breakfast that morning, whose commander takes a ball and who hears it whiz by harmlessly an inch from his ear – can affect the outcome of a battle, even when it appears on paper that numbers or armaments or terrain must give one side or the other a decisive advantage. A good general makes the best of the elements he can control, but victory comes down to chance.”

“I know that,” said Corentin. “It’s the same for the police, but– aïe!”

“If you really knew it we would not be having this conversation,” Hulot pointed out, bringing the belt down again. “You believe you arranged things perfectly at Izé to give Chevrel a bad time without doing any real harm, and I hope you’re right, but we may yet arrive there to find a massacre. Suppose there is a secret passage into the chateau, and the Chouans know it, and creep inside at night and murder everyone in their sleep? Suppose the well has run dry? Men can survive a week without food, but not without water. Suppose the Chouans set the roof on fire?” He laid down another stripe with every question. “Any number of things can go wrong, and you have placed Sixth Company in a position where they are surrounded and outnumbered four to one. Captain Chevrel is not a bad officer or he would not hold the rank he does, but I don’t have confidence he can overcome those odds. Do you?”

“ _No,_ ” Corentin spat, spitefully emphatic. 

“Third. Mobile columns are a net. They work by sweeping across the country in parallel so that the enemy cannot escape them. If you cut one of the strands of the net and send it off on some other business, the fish will swim out through the hole. With a little luck they’ve all swum to Val d’Izé and we’ll catch them up again, but we cannot rely upon it.”

Corentin did not contest this point. By this time his bottom was more red than pink, and he had given himself up entirely to tears. Perhaps he feared it would be too difficult to make himself understood through his hiccuping sobs.

“I know you think we soldiers have heads filled with mud, and perhaps you’re right,” Hulot said, more kindly than he intended to, for despite his better judgment he was beginning to feel a little sorry for the exasperating incroyable. “I don’t claim to have your quick wits. But war is my trade and I know it, and you do not. Things are done as they are done for a reason. My men are deployed where they are for a reason. Do not interfere in military matters you do not understand, certainly not without first consulting me.”

A rapid flurry of blows drove the point home. Corentin was in no state to notice and howled piteously at every stroke, but Hulot was hitting him more lightly now. It didn’t take much force to make an impression on raw flesh that had already suffered two or three strikes from the belt. Besides, Hulot’s arm was beginning to tire.

“Fourth. As far as your own trade is concerned, you were sent to Brittany to support government policy, not to deliberately undermine it. I don’t care if you sow confusion among the enemy with false messages – it’s not how I’d prefer to fight this war, but it’s the job Fouché sent you here to do and I can’t fault you for doing it. But for God’s sake, let’s not have any more of this Terrorist nonsense. You have the whole country in an uproar and we don’t even have the damn plate! At least if we’d really confiscated it I could sell it and pay the men their back wages,” Hulot said in exasperation. He lashed the belt down a few more times, and then paused to survey the ground.

Corentin’s arse was cherry red, shading to a dusky purple along the worst welts. His pale skin bruised easily and showed every mark, so the aftermath of a thrashing always looked worse than it was, but when Hulot rested the belt against the abused flesh his buttocks began quivering uncontrollably. That was a sign of real agony, one that he couldn’t fake, and Hulot thought his desolate weeping sounded sincere as well.

He deserved a little more, really, for crimes of this magnitude, but if Hulot kept whipping him he would be in no fit state to ride tomorrow, or even to walk, and he had a long journey ahead of him. Hulot had command of the fourth column, for they had the hardest march and would need the most encouragement, and it would be easier to enlist the help of the National Guard if he came to Fougères to request it in person rather than sending a subordinate. And since Corentin clearly couldn’t be trusted on his own, he’d be coming too. Which meant this punishment was at an end.

Hulot tossed the belt down on the table, then hoisted Corentin up by the collar and set him back on his feet. He stood himself and pressed the spy to his breast. Corentin collapsed gratefully against him, clinging to his coat and weeping into his shoulder, and Hulot held him until his hysterical sobs had softened to a muted sniveling.

“Better?”

“No,” Corentin said into his coat, with enough venom that Hulot knew that he was. He peeled the spy off him and tilted his chin up so he could look into his tearstained face.

“Is there room for a handkerchief somewhere in that ridiculous waistcoat of yours?” It was cut so high that Hulot honestly couldn’t see where anyone might fit a pocket.

“I could use my cravat if someone hadn’t gagged me with it,” Corentin said reproachfully. It was lying on the other side of the table. He took a step towards it and then stumbled, hobbled by the breeches that were still bunched around his knees.

“You might not want to pull those up again tonight,” Hulot said. The tight leather would be unforgiving on a recently whipped arse.

Corentin shuddered. “No, I think not.”

Hulot let him grab his arm for balance as he pulled off his boots one-handed, and then kicked his way free of his breeches.

“All right,” he said, when Corentin had two feet on the ground once more. “Wash your face and go to bed. We’ll have to make an early start tomorrow if we’re to reach Fougères by nightfall.”

“Fougères?” Corentin wailed incredulously. “You’re not dragging me all the way to _Fougères!_ ”

“I can hardly trust you out of my sight,” Hulot pointed out. “Besides, as I recall, you’re the only one with any idea what’s going on. I’ll have need of your insight when we get to Izé.”


End file.
